Currently Reading

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Faithful Place by Tana French - Yes, another Tana French book.  I'm plowing through these things, but that's easy to do with good books.  This novel follows Undercover Detective Frank Mackey, as he is drawn back into his childhood home 19 years after leaving and never looking back.  A call from his sister brings him home to discover that Rosie Daly, his first love and the girl he thought left him for England, never made it out of Faithful Place, their street, after all.  Combining all the relationships and dynamics that make up a complicated family life, French expertly draws you into Mackey's life, both past and present.  

The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones - We open with Hannah running for her life, driving away from something as yet unknown, her husband bleeding out in the passenger seat next to her and her daughter asleep in the back.  Over the course of the novel, we find out exactly who Hannah is running from and why: a supernatural creature known as a hosszu eletek who has been obsessed with her family for over a century.  I'm a sucker for stories that cross generations, especially when they are linked as cleverly as The String Diaries does it.  I also love the idea of a secret sub-culture, hidden among us for years.  This book was fast-paced, well-written, and a great story.

Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix - You may mistake this book for your Ikea catalogue.  And that's the point.  Set up as part retail catalogue and part ghost story, Horrorstor may be a genre all its own.  Amy works at Orsk furniture store, a cheaper and shoddier version of Ikea.  She's bored, lazy, and doing her damnedest to avoid her boss so that she doesn't get fired.  Weird things have been happening at Orsk lately though, seemingly at night when the store is closed.  When Amy's boss asks her and another coworker to work an overnight shift with him to patrol the store, she's not psyched for the job, but she does need the time-and-a-half.  What they find takes us into total horror story nightmare.  Hendrix has taken the classic haunted house story and flipped it on its head in a funny, smart, and truly terrifying way.

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion - I picked a good time to read my first Didion, considering she's been everywhere lately thanks to the new Celine ads.  Despite being the coolest model around, Didion is also an incredibly brilliant writer.  Play It As It Lays is deceptively simple in its construction.  Books that seem to be about nothing are often my favorites.  The characters fully embrace the concept of ennui.  Nothing seems to matter to anyone.  I'm not even sure what else to say about it other than it is sublime.  Didion's prose is exceptional.  There were dozens of lines or passages that I re-read simply because they were so beautiful or haunting.  I will definitely be seeking out more of her work very, very soon.